Posted on 01/10/2008 8:34:42 AM PST by goldstategop
Advanced word on the Governor’s State of the State message (ironically abbreviated “S-O-S”) is that he intends to blame the state’s massive budget deficit on formulas that lock in spending. A gubernatorial minion opined today that “about 90 percent of the state's budget is tied to spending formulas, contracts and/or statutes, requiring spending to increase by specific amounts each year.” What hogwash.
Since I first arrived in Sacramento in 1982, governors have used this sophistry to excuse their mismanagement of the budget, and there’s just one problem with it. Virtually all of the “formulas, contracts and/or statutes” can be suspended with the same 2/3 vote that is required to adopt the budget in the first place. Our budget crisis isn’t because these politicians can’t suspend these “mandates” – it’s because they won’t.
True, there are a few expenditures required by the state constitution. The state’s annual debt payments can’t be suspended, although less borrowing can reduce them in future years. Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger’s borrowing binge has increased our annual debt obligation from $2 billion in 2003 to more than $7 billion today.
The state’s pension costs are contractual obligations that can’t be suspended, but shrinking the public workforce or reforming pensions for new hires can reduce future obligations. Unfortunately, under Schwarzenegger the state employee rolls have grown at nearly twice the rate of population growth.
In addition, there is one ballot proposition that is beyond the control of the legislature and the governor to suspend: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s own “After School Program” that now consumes more than a half-billion dollars each year.
Everything else can be suspended by the same vote that adopts the budget – including every statute on the books. Even most constitutional mandates provide for their own suspension. For example, Proposition 98, which “mandates” that nearly half of the budget must go to public schools, can be suspended by 2/3 vote. Not only has Schwarzenegger refused to do so through the last three years of declining public school enrollment, he has increased the Prop. 98 base – and therefore future budgets -- by billions of dollars above what Prop. 98 calls for.
Similarly, the State Legislature can force any state contract back to the bargaining table simply by refusing to fund it fully in the annual budget act. When this was proposed in an attempt to bring state prison guard salaries under control in 2004, Schwarzenegger opposed it.
Perhaps the most telling point, however, is simply this: when Senate Republicans warned last summer that the budget was dangerously unbalanced and attempted to get additional spending reductions, Gov. Schwarzenegger campaigned against them while assuring the public that the budget was not only balanced but included the “biggest budget reserve in history.”
Lincoln once referred to the cuttlefish’s tendency to release clouds of ink to muddy the water whenever it is frightened or challenged. The Governor is playing cuttlefish.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
A 10% across-the-board cut will do it. Of course, that will leave the public employee unions with far less money to pour into Hillary’s campaign. Decisions, decisions... ;)
It is not a budget crisis until the legislature cuts it’s own pay.
Then, and only then, can you believe them.
Maybe Arnold can sell Yosemite to the Arabs or China.
If he did, there are plenty of free traitors right here on this forum that would salute him for it, and suggest more of our national treasures should be sold off.
Have you seen Yosemite lately? The place is a mess. The forests are a disaster of bad management while weeds threaten what's left.
Let's see, the Constitution authorizes the Federal government to hold "forts, dockyards, arsenals, magazines, and other needful buildings." It doesn't list 'parks, wetlands, marine preserves, and other national treasures.'
Why should Fedgov hold an armed monopoly in the land entertainment business? Is it to benefit a special interest? That is why Yellowstone was set aside in the first place, to please the railroads with the first ever subsidy in "eco-tourism" business. The fire there in 1989 caused so much erosion that the ROOFS of some buildings were six feet under mud. The Park Service tyrannizes their neighbors. They virtually steal "their" land. They pay no insurance. The infrastructure is crumbling. They do a lousy job while depressing the investment value of going into competition with them. I frankly don't think you believe that to be a good thing but it is inherent to any socialized industry.
I suggest that these "national treasures" would be a lot better off in private hands and I'm no "free traitor."
I backed McClintock during the recall. We’d be a lot better off today if he had won.
With the cost of Welfare and Foodstamps to illegal aliens in Los Angeles costing a Billion dollars a year, add to that the cost to the rest of the state. Include the cost for infrastructure, busses, medical, crime, police, courts and incarceration, schools, bilingual employees and translations to documents, underground commerce, counterfeited documents, after school programs for the 60 percent unmarried illegal immigrant mothers, the list goes on. One Billion Dollars for Welfare and Foodstamps in JUST Los Angeles.
Enforce our immigration laws and the budget will be on its way to recovery.
I hear Arnold wants to close the beaches in Southern California. That’ll go over well. But I’ll bet he keeps Muscle Beach open.
Snowy Plovers. They're "endangered" from Washington to Mexico.
Uh, how many plovers does it take to be endangered over such a stretch?
BTW, I predicted this in 2001. If you find the stuff on salmon boring, move on to a section in the chapter called, "A Seal of Approval."
I just can’t see the governor trying to close the beaches...since the 9/11 attack and the Mexican invasion haven’t Americans suffered enough?
. Uhh Carry, I'm from that neck of the woods, I never saw or read reports as you claim. In fact, erosion that first year was far less a problem than first anticipated. Irregardless, those fires were a natural process that burned up hundreds of thousands of acres of DEAD lodgepole pines and opened up the land for vegetation more condusive to the wildlife there.
I agree with your comments. What that leaves us is conservancies or foreign control of our parks.
Both those concerns are objectionable to me. I consider the conservancies to be leftist front organizations for the most part, holding vast parcels of land that the government has essentially gifted them through provision of federal dollars or outright land grants.
Would you like to see conservancies take over our parks?
I had also meant to ask you what your thought on federal ownership of land is.
It’s been my thinking that the federal government shouldn’t hold all the land that it does. It should revert to the states. Do you disagree with that opinion?
I would add, that I do think the federal government has some need of large parcels of land for defense purposes. I don’t think it should hold all that it does.
In principle, yes, in principal however, FedGov needs Federal lands as collateral so that they can keep borrowing money with which to protect the lenders with the military while allowing them exclusive rights to cash in on the collateral at a later date.
I would add, that I do think the federal government has some need of large parcels of land for defense purposes. I don’t think it should hold all that it does.
Absolutely, that falls under "forts." When military sites are selected to sequester minerals however (see above), that's going over the line.
Does the government list specific plots or a blanket promise of land when borrowing?
Also, what’s your take on the conservancies?
Arnold wont have to close the southern most beach in the state, it is closed most of the time from Sewage from Mexico...
How can you close a beach anyway if there are no lifeguards to call the cops?
That is a good point.. I guess the beaches are not actually closed, but signs are posted not to go in the water as it is polluted....I doubt seriously the cops would show up any way...good point..
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